iCloud pictures help

[Beehpee]

Hi all, I’ve seen several whizz kids on this forum with computers and phones, I’ve got several iPhones with loads of photos on, lots of the pics are saved on to iCloud, I want to get away from iCloud and get hard copies onto a 2TB removable storage, transferring is a pain, anyone got and easy way? All help appreciated.

BP

 

[otherclive]

Hi all, I’ve seen several whizz kids on this forum with computers and phones, I’ve got several iPhones with loads of photos on, lots of the pics are saved on to iCloud, I want to get away from iCloud and get hard copies onto a 2TB removable storage, transferring is a pain, anyone got and easy way? All help appreciated.

BP

Can you not sign in your computer to ICloud and download the photos to the computer whilst selecting the TB HDD as the destination folder. Then just let it run.

 

[Beehpee]

I’m planning to give that a go today, one thing I’ve found with apple as much as I prefer apple phones, apple can be a pain in the proverbial when trying to combine with anything not apple, it’s strange when trying to download pictures it gets so far and then stops, I’ve so far managed to download over 6000 pictures from 3 phones, another pain is when I start the download to the pc I click on delete pictures automatically when copied, so I can see which are left and I’d know which have copied and which haven’t, unfortunately none get deleted and trying to see what’s copied and what’s not is a nightmare, I’ve got to be super careful because a couple of years ago my wife’s brother died quite suddenly and we’ve got a number of pictures of him over the years, also there’s been 2 new grandchildren in the last 5 years so don’t want to lose anything that’s special, I’ll plod on and could be someone with good ideas still to come as I didn’t put my post on till late last night.

BP

 

[JTQ]

With the inherently high file size of mobile phone taken pictures you potentially will be talking about a fair to very long data transfer time being involved, if there are a lot of pictures.
As OC suggests it is best IMO to do it via a computer onto an external drive and probably through the night when locally the internet is not overburdened with traffic.
If you have a USB 3, the blue coloured plug, external drive, and the computer has a USB 3 port, use that. If not it might be quicker to initially download them to the computers internal drive, then edit what of them you want to "keep" to transfer just those to a slower external drive.

 

[otherclive]

I’m planning to give that a go today, one thing I’ve found with apple as much as I prefer apple phones, apple can be a pain in the proverbial when trying to combine with anything not apple, it’s strange when trying to download pictures it gets so far and then stops, I’ve so far managed to download over 6000 pictures from 3 phones, another pain is when I start the download to the pc I click on delete pictures automatically when copied, so I can see which are left and I’d know which have copied and which haven’t, unfortunately none get deleted and trying to see what’s copied and what’s not is a nightmare, I’ve got to be super careful because a couple of years ago my wife’s brother died quite suddenly and we’ve got a number of pictures of him over the years, also there’s been 2 new grandchildren in the last 5 years so don’t want to lose anything that’s special, I’ll plod on and could be someone with good ideas still to come as I didn’t put my post on till late last night.

BP

If your PC is Windows there is an ICloud app for Windows. Don’t know if that would help the transfer. Although a straight sign in to ICloud would give you visibility of its functions. When I have done long uploads and downloads I’ve set the computer and display energy settings so it stays “ live” no standby but screen on screen saver to protect it.

 

[Sam Vimes]

I see that when you download your photos you then want to delete them from the cloud to see where you are. That fact that it doesn't work, I think, is a bonus and I would advise against trying to do this anyway at this stage.

One of the benefits of cloud storage is that companys like Apple will have a backup strategy in place to avoid losing your pictures. If you download then delete from the cloud the only copy you have is on your machine that could die at any time or get hit by a virus or ransomware So, try and find another way to keep track of where you are in the download process - perhaps write down the last file name you transfered.

Also consider backing up your data on your pc. Photos especially are precious. Some people like to have their data both locally and in the cloud as a backup but I don't use the cloud for much at all prefering to have everything local. So all my data is stored in my PC and also regularly backed up to external hard drives. If we go away for any long period of time I give the external drives to friends to keep just in case.

 

[otherclive]

I see that when you download your photos you then want to delete them from the cloud to see where you are. That fact that it doesn't work, I think, is a bonus and I would advise against trying to do this anyway at this stage.

One of the benefits of cloud storage is that companys like Apple will have a backup strategy in place to avoid losing your pictures. If you download then delete from the cloud the only copy you have is on your machine that could die at any time or get hit by a virus or ransomware So, try and find another way to keep track of where you are in the download process - perhaps write down the last file name you transfered.

Also consider backing up your data on your pc. Photos especially are precious. Some people like to have their data both locally and in the cloud as a backup but I don't use the cloud for much at all prefering to have everything local. So all my data is stored in my PC and also regularly backed up to external hard drives. If we go away for any long period of time I give the external drives to friends to keep just in case.

I think iCloud saves deleted photos for 30 days. The OP should check. A while back I decided to have Documents and Desktop in ICloud rather than local. Glad I did as the MAC died suddenly. Having them on the ICloud drive was a life saver as I could still do my “ admin” using Iphone or IPad whilst sorting out what to do with the IMAC. In the end I decided to scrap the IMAC and have physically destroyed the HDD. (See picture). For my new MAC Mini I restored everything from the Time Machine back up held on an encrypted 2TB HDD. If we go away for any length of time I also do a couple of Time Machine back ups to a smaller portable HDD and our daughter looks after that. It would be pure bad look if anything untoward happened to both our houses.

 

[Guzzilazz]

I strongly encourage people to use some sort of "off-site" storage. The obvious reason is what would happen if you have a house fire or your roof tank ruptures? Would retrieving your new HDD be the first priority? At least with an off-site version you can reconstruct... and this doesn't just apply to photos, think about any important docs.

I'm a retired IT manager who looked after an estate of 30,000 PC's. I separated my data from my device many years ago, because it was a PITA when I upgraded the PC to transfer the data, and also individual PC standard HD's are vulnerable to failure (about 30per day when I was working). My kit is as follows (it may be overkill for most of you but take out of it what suits you): I have a 4 disk Network attached storage (NAS) with 4x2TB disks. This gives me 6TB of usable space because the disks are set up in a "RAID" Array, which stores a part of each individual byte of information across 3 of the 4 disks. The 4th disk records the "checksum" (a number which is the sum of the data in that byte). If a disk fails, the data can be reconstructed on the fly from the other 2 and the checksum, and usually most devices will automatically repopulate the blank disk that replaces the failed one.

If I have to rebuild my PC, it's a 2 minute job to link the PC default folders to the matching folders on the NAS.
The NAS backs up to an external 4TB HDD attached to it by USB. This ISN'T a data security backup, but an "oops I screwed up that excel file yesterday, I'll restore an older copy from the backup.

The real data security comes from my NAS replicating to OneDrive (my personal choice - many others are available) continuously so if the house burns down I loose all the kit, minus the ability to go back to older versions of documents. In the event of a disaster, a small price to pay.

Oh and do disasters happen? Yes. On the night of the opening of the London Olympics, a large NAS (as in £00k's worth and 500TB) in one of our legacy data centres had a water pipe burst over the top of it... Our DR sprang into action and we only had TWO HOURS recorded outage, but in actual fact facilities were coming back gradually over the 2 hours

 

[Beehpee]

Some good advice I will be using, the iCloud for instance is good but because we (me & wife) have both had various iPhones for years, I’ve got several in my cupboard full of things to do that never get done, there is also several iCloud accounts as well, when I do a download from a phone it downloads some then stops, identifying which are on the external drive is a case of looking at each one separately because they don’t seem to download in any sort of order and the labels seem to change, when I’ve finally got everything off the phones and have got a copy of everything from each iCloud account and all of it is on my external drive I can then upload everything to a single cloud source, I’ve just found in the dark corners of THE CUPBOARD a usb which I had no idea of it’s contents and turned out to contain some pictures going back maybe 40 years, there was around 500 pics that had I not found it I wouldn’t know I’d lost but seeing what was on there I’m pleased I haven’t lost, I’m not tending to work so much cos of lockdown and because I’m getting towards retiring it’s good to get things in order, I had a book off my granddaughter at Christmas that is called “Hi Grandad this is from you to me” and it’s for me to fill in about my life, she want that filled in plus photos and also I’ve got my family tree which goes back to 1800’s, the family tree details are in the loft somewhere? collating all this will probably take until I’m well in my dotage but gotta start somewhere, good advice so far, thanks all.

BP

 

[otherclive]

I strongly encourage people to use some sort of "off-site" storage. The obvious reason is what would happen if you have a house fire or your roof tank ruptures? Would retrieving your new HDD be the first priority? At least with an off-site version you can reconstruct... and this doesn't just apply to photos, think about any important docs.

I'm a retired IT manager who looked after an estate of 30,000 PC's. I separated my data from my device many years ago, because it was a PITA when I upgraded the PC to transfer the data, and also individual PC standard HD's are vulnerable to failure (about 30per day when I was working). My kit is as follows (it may be overkill for most of you but take out of it what suits you): I have a 4 disk Network attached storage (NAS) with 4x2TB disks. This gives me 6TB of usable space because the disks are set up in a "RAID" Array, which stores a part of each individual byte of information across 3 of the 4 disks. The 4th disk records the "checksum" (a number which is the sum of the data in that byte). If a disk fails, the data can be reconstructed on the fly from the other 2 and the checksum, and usually most devices will automatically repopulate the blank disk that replaces the failed one.

If I have to rebuild my PC, it's a 2 minute job to link the PC default folders to the matching folders on the NAS.
The NAS backs up to an external 4TB HDD attached to it by USB. This ISN'T a data security backup, but an "oops I screwed up that excel file yesterday, I'll restore an older copy from the backup.

The real data security comes from my NAS replicating to OneDrive (my personal choice - many others are available) continuously so if the house burns down I loose all the kit, minus the ability to go back to older versions of documents. In the event of a disaster, a small price to pay.

Oh and do disasters happen? Yes. On the night of the opening of the London Olympics, a large NAS (as in £00k's worth and 500TB) in one of our legacy data centres had a water pipe burst over the top of it... Our DR sprang into action and we only had TWO HOURS recorded outage, but in actual fact facilities were coming back gradually over the 2 hours

Quite sophisticated but what would you advise for the ordinary householder? I have two Time Machine HDD one at home, one at my daughters. Desktop and Documents are in iCloud. Lots of photos in Amazon (free cloud). Most photos unedited on DVDs in garage. MiniDV tapes in garage. The weakest area is old family photos and slides awaiting digitising.

 

[Buckman]

I have never used iCloud or any other type of similar storage. I regularly download all pictures and documents onto USB sticks. Two are kept in the home and one in the car. I am very wary of off site storage locations.

 

[Sam Vimes]

Off site backup storage is a good idea but not always practical or affordable. For my professional work this was a must but now being retired the best I can do is mitigate the risk as far as possible.

All my data including the OS is duplicated onto hard drives kept at home except when away for an extended duration. I have too much data to put into the cloud - which I don't fully trust - without incurring extra charges. Cloud services can be good but can also hold you to ransom. Some cloud providers provide small amounts of storage for free others charge. Some even give you free space but then later decide to charge or cut back on the amount you can store.

Nothing is guaranteed risk free - just do the best you can but don't rely on a single point that may fail.

 

[Sam Vimes]

I have never used iCloud or any other type of similar storage. I regularly download all pictures and documents onto USB sticks. Two are kept in the home and one in the car. I am very wary of off site storage locations.

If it works for you that's good but USB sticks might not last as long as your hard drives and can easily get lost.
If you want to know why USB sticks might not have a long life take a look at the issue some Tesla owners faced with loss of functionality because the in car memory wore out.

 

[otherclive]

If it works for you that's good but USB sticks might not last as long as your hard drives and can easily get lost.
If you want to know why USB sticks might not have a long life take a look at the issue some Tesla owners faced with loss of functionality because the in car memory wore out.

Proximity to a magnetic source can affect USB integrity.

 

[JTQ]

I am very wary of off site storage locations.

An understandable perception at least in our older generation, but a question please, for the experts and professionals in our community here, would you kindly outline the realities for us?

 

[Buckman]

Proximity to a magnetic source can affect USB integrity.

That is true but isn't it possible an EMP can also affect a storage location? A couple of months ago I decided to review all the photos taken and looked at it from the point if we had a camera with film. Would we have taken the photo?
Many photos were very similar and almost duplicated. I managed to delete a couple of hundred "pointless" photos.

 

[otherclive]

I have never used iCloud or any other type of similar storage. I regularly download all pictures and documents onto USB sticks. Two are kept in the home and one in the car. I am very wary of off site storage locations.

Unless you have a lot of 'Documents" both iCloud and One Drive give 5gb of free storage and i guess Google do too. That should be more than enough for documents. I was a bit conservative but realised the benefits of Cloud systems when we went on some long hauls a few years back and could access documents from any where with a internet or phone connection if required. so passport, visas, emergency contacts, insurances etc were all there if required from some pretty remote locations too. And with the recent demise of my iMac having Desktop and Documents in iCloud was a real boon, asa USB stick would be no use if you haven't got the machine to run it in.

 

[otherclive]

That is true but isn't it possible an EMP can also affect a storage location? A couple of months ago I decided to review all the photos taken and looked at it from the point if we had a camera with film. Would we have taken the photo?
Many photos were very similar and almost duplicated. I managed to delete a couple of hundred "pointless" photos.
[/QUOTE

.

Hopefully we are not facing nuclear war whilst still in a pandemic. Storage locations are also diverse and backed up. If such situation should arise we would have more to worry about than the family photos and caravan insurance policy

 

[JTQ]

Would we have taken the photo?
Many photos were very similar and almost duplicated. I managed to delete a couple of hundred "pointless" photos.

Those days "film" was both "expensive" and very finite so we at least were more considering on taking shots and doing multi shoots.
Now with digital and increasingly the massive on board camera data storage then any opportunity is worth recording, and multi shoots worth doing in the hope one captures something or focus a bit better than a single shot would.
This though tends to mean we need to be brutal in our "pruning" of what to retain. It's a whole different game now, IMO, I even carry a camera phone almost every minute of the day we are about, not something I did so much with an SLR.

Some years back I digitised the families 35 mm slide collection, a massively labour intensive and tediously slow process with the Nikon scanner I have and Windows 98 SCSI machine it needed. Realised that back then we still took rather a huge amount!

 

[Sam Vimes]

Using the cloud as a backup resource or even a file sharing resource can be very useful but you need to be aware of the consequences of doing so. Unfortunately the T&Cs of these services are mind blowing. One of the starting points though is that nothing in this life is free, so if Google or whoever offer you free storage space ask yourself '"whats in it for them' Basically they want to monetise everything you see and do through their services although you can restrict some of what they do if you can find the right setups. Maybe it doesn't bother you.

Some of the documents including photos may be shared and used by Google and third parties. For instance its possible that one of your photos could appear in their adverts for companies. Years ago - maybe they still do - Google used to go through your emails to see what your were talking about then they would serve you ads based on that.

Since we're talking about photos, if you upload the originals to Google Photos then these count against your storage limit and its easy to build up a large collection quickly. You could choose to upload in High Quality which doesn't count against your storage limit. However, this changes on June 1st 2021 when they will start to count against your limit. Then there's the little clause at the bottom that says "If you go over your storage quota or don't log into your account for 2 years or longer, these "High quality" photos are deleted." A bit vague admittedly.

Don't forget that pretty much everything you do with your online Google account can take up storage e.g email, photos and documents.

T&Cs often change as per the above example. Over the years the amount of free space offered by cloud services has often changed with the usual result of it being less and if you want more you have to pay. So if you get locked into one of these service will you be able to use it in the future without incurring additional costs.

Then there's the issue of security. Hardly a week goes by without some leakage of account information from one online company or other. To be honest I've never heard of problems with direct hacks on Google or MS but how careful are you with your usernames and passwords? Do you use a Password Manager for complicated less quessable passwords? Do you use the same password across diffferent sites? Do you use Two Factor Authentication?

The week spots these days are not the problems of hacking into your machine or contracting a virus ( an apt term these days) but phishing emails and the like whereby you actually give away the information that will allow someone to access your account.

Use cloud resources carefully.

 

[JTQ]

Some of the documents including photos may be shared and used by Google and third parties. For instance its possible that one of your photos could appear in their adverts for companies.

Very worrying and seems to run completely contrary to their terms & conditions, where they state "your content remains yours".
I can see a weakness if you opt into "sharing" where you agree to share.

Are you sure on this, to me, very vital point?

G' Drive's T & Cs

 

[Sam Vimes]

To be honest I'm not entirely sure given the complexity and depth of the T&Cs. I believe I came across this some years back but while they used to scan your emails to then be able to serve you personal ads, they stopped doing this (supposedly) back in 2017. Maybe they don't use your photos anymore. I think they can use your user name and photo in some recommendations or reviews unless you click on right option.

However, given that they may have done so in the past doesn't mean they can't do it again. They will be scanning your photos to ensure your not posting anything you shouldn't be doing. They also scan your photos to make recommendations for albums or for searching for things within Photos.

Certainly if you share something then the genie is out of the box and it can appear anywhere.

I err on the side of caution and keep everything local. I will occassionaly share a home video or a few photos with friends but then take them down a couple of days later.

"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me"

 

[Guzzilazz]

So for all of you who "keep it local"... What happens if you have a fire or flood? Because I buy MS Office as a subscription, I get 1TB of storage included.

The other bit I don't get is that if you don't like Cloud based storage, where do you think your emails are? Most people use IMAP type mailboxes these days, and the core store for that is at AOL/Microsoft/Apple/Google etc...

 

[Buckman]

So for all of you who "keep it local"... What happens if you have a fire or flood? Because I buy MS Office as a subscription, I get 1TB of storage included.

The other bit I don't get is that if you don't like Cloud based storage, where do you think your emails are? Most people use IMAP type mailboxes these days, and the core store for that is at AOL/Microsoft/Apple/Google etc...

I would have thought that most people use POP or SMTP mailboxes and not IMAP? My main email is not stored or filtered on any AOL/MS/Apple/Google etc server. Like many other people I use gmail for forums so not bothered with keeping those emails.

 

[JTQ]

The other bit I don't get is that if you don't like Cloud based storage, where do you think your emails are?

In my case it is not that I don't like, or even that I don't use Cloud based storage or even don't use Gmail, my issue is I don't really understand the risks in doing so.
I would like to know, debunking any myths?